United States Department of Agriculture: Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service
United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications
Accessibility Remediation
If you are unable to use this item in its current form due to accessibility barriers, you may request remediation through our remediation request form.
Document Type
Article
Date of this Version
2012
Citation
Proceedings of the 14th WDM Conference (2012): 124-128.
Abstract
European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) are agricultural and societal pests in the U.S., thus, understanding their migratory behavior is of practical importance to resource managers. We leg-banded starlings and used publicly reported encounters with them to estimate migration distances traveled by wintering populations to reach their reproductive territories. We captured and banded 9,939 starlings at 6 sites between November and February 2005–2010 in 3 states. We banded birds in industrial areas surrounding Omaha, Nebraska, and at cattle feedlots in central Kansas (n = 2) and the Texas Panhandle (n = 3). Banding sites were associated with wintering aggregations that caused agricultural or urban conflicts. Thirty band encounters (0.3%) occurred between April–August, which we defined as the reproductive period. The median number of days between date of banding and date of encounter was 170 (n = 28, Range: 66–862; Q3–Q1 = 361). We categorized encounters as either regional (≥80 km) or local (<80 >km). Median distance of regional encounters was 421 km (n = 16, Range: 125–1,384; Q3–Q1 = 456); median distance of local encounters was 24 km (n = 14, Range: 12–75, Q3–Q1 = 5). The regional encounters occurred on a median bearing from the banding sites +12° from true north (n = 16, Range: -18–67; Q3–Q1 = 26). Starlings are renowned and persistent pests, and the birds from our study areas probably contributed to agricultural and urban conflicts in several states.